Office 365 Email Retention Policy

A retention policy defines how long to keep email in certain folders. You can set the retention policy on any folder you create. However, some system-level folders, also known as default folders,  have retention policies that cannot be modified.

Retention policies for default folders

Retention policies for default folders are automatically enforced.

Note: Office 365 accounts are not backed up. However, you can recover message up to 14 days from when it is emptied from your Deleted Items folder. See Recover Deleted Email for more information.

Retention policies for personal folders

Personal retention policies for folders you create can be assigned from webmail. If you don't assign a policy, the folder or subfolder uses the policy of its parent folder.

To see the retention policies that are currently available to you, click the Settings icon and then click Options. In the left pane, navigate to Mail > Automatic processing > Retention policies.

To assign a retention policy to a folder:

1. In webmail, right-click a folder and then click Assign policy.
2. Click the retention period for which you would like to keep messages in this folder before they are automatically deleted.